Description
Words of the Huron is an investigation into seventeenth-century Huron culture through a kind of linguistic archaeology of a language that died midway through the twentieth century.
John L. Steckley explores a range of topics, including: the construction of longhouses and wooden armour; the use of words for trees in village names; the social anthropological standards of kinship terms and clans; Huron conceptualizing of European-borne disease; the spirit realm of orenda; Huron nations and kinship groups; relationship to the environment; material culture; and the relationship between the French missionaries and settlers and the Huron people.
Steckley’s source material includes the first dictionary of any Aboriginal language, Recollect Brother Gabriel Sagard’s Huron phrasebook, published in 1632, and the sophisticated Jesuit missionary study of the language from the 1620s to the 1740s, beginning with the work of Father Jean de Brébeuf. The only book of its kind, Words of the Huron will spark discussion among scholars, students, and anyone interested in North American archaeology, Native studies, cultural anthropology, and seventeenth-century North American history.
Reviews
``The book contains a wealth of both data and speculation. It illustrates some of the limits of even the best linguistic records from the past, as well as the potential results of supplementing linguistic materials with other kinds of evidence. It goes a long way toward meeting its aim of giving a voice to the Huron people.''
- Clifford Abbott
``Steckley's work adds ethnolinguistics to the methods of research in Huron studies.... A fine example of original, intensive research.... Highly recommended.''
- R. Berleant-Schiller